September 6, 2007

The decision not to recall Saddam Hussein’s army was thoroughly considered by top officials in the American government. At the time, this decision was not controversial. When [the coalition’s national security adviser, Walter Slocombe] held a press conference in Baghdad on May 23 to explain the decision, only two reporters showed up — neither of them Americans. The first I heard of doubts about the decision was in the fall of 2003 after the insurgency had picked up speed.

Moreover, we were right to build a new Iraqi Army. Despite all the difficulties encountered, Iraq’s new professional soldiers are the country’s most effective and trusted security force. By contrast, the Baathist-era police force, which we did recall to duty, has proven unreliable and is mistrusted by the very Iraqi people it is supposed to protect.

Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W Bush, by Robert Draper... suggests Mr Bush was unaware the Iraqi army was to be broken up by Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, in May 2003, a decision seen as one of the biggest post-invasion mistakes as it put hundreds of thousands of armed men on the street.

The president told Mr Draper that the policy was to keep the Iraqi army after Saddam's fall. For some reason, it "didn't happen", he said.

Hindsight is 20/20. I'm sure our Monday morning quaterbacks would be singing a different tune if we hadn't disbanded Saddam's army: Baathists in the Army are waging genocide on the Shia! HOW could you have not forseen this! You should have disbanded the Army and started fresh

No one is telling the truth, hd. They are all liars and bad people, out to lie and do badness. They don't care about you and me, only about filling with coffers with blood money and soaking the poor and devastating fragile Mother Earth.

Many say it was a mistake to disband Saddam's army. However, they only say this because it is the opposite of what happened.

I think disbanding the army was a smart thing to do. In the short term it may have made things more difficult, however, in the long term the army will have a more solid foundation and will be a better institution.

Like Turkey and S. Korea, the army will provide the stability over the next 50-100 years that Iraq will need to overcome a thousand years of tribal rule.

Iraq will emerge as a successful state despite the opposition to it from Democrats.

If only Robert Draper, instead of becoming a writer, had used his vast powers for leadership to step in after 9/11 and after tell the military what it should be doing at every step of the way.

Clearly, "General" Draper would have kept us out of this mess. Pity he chose instead to become a post hoc critic. What a waste of talent! It's a shame we'll never live in the world where Draper ran it right.

I think Bremer's statement is a bit disingenous for this reason: The Iraqi army was defeated, but it was dissolved only in an organizational sense. The soldiers of the army, many of whom kept their AKs and equipment, could have easily been told to report for reconscription and reorganization--the prospect of a paycheck would have been a big incentive, esp if there was a safe conduct assurance.

1. Just before the March 2003 invasion, the “neo-cons” were forecasting that the war would be a “cakewalk.”

2. They predicted that the Iraqi people would greet U.S. troops “not as occupiers but liberators,” showering them with garlands of flowers and chocolates. (And bullets and bombs.)

3. The war was justified to the people in the U.S. by using falsified intelligence reports and unadulterated lies about Iraq’s so-called “weapons of mass destruction.” The reports were produced by the CIA under its former director George Tenet. (No WMD...except in Fen's warped mind.)

4. After the conquest of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraq’s new colonial administration's first move was to disband the Iraqi military. Bremer and his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were confident that they could construct a new, pro-U.S. Iraqi military in no time. (Oh...and when the 400,000 Iraqi troops were sent home, many took their weapons with them.)

5. Later that month, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the Iraq invasion, predicted that by July or August 2003, U.S. troop levels could be reduced from 135,000 to 30-40,000. (Forty-eight months later there are 150,000 U.S. troops and another 20,000 U.S. “private security” forces in Iraq.)

6. On May 1, 2003, President Bush staged his now-infamous stunt, dressing up as fighter pilot and landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner reading, “Mission Accomplished.”(Right.)

7. Since then, the toll of death and destruction has soared. More than 100,000 Iraqis have died from the invasion and occupation, according to the British medical journal, The Lancet. At least 1,300 U.S. troops have been killed in action and 23,000 evacuated for serious wounds, injuries and illnesses. (And now the numbers are 3,800 dead and 28,000 wounded.)

8. While U.S. companies like Halliburton have made big profits, living conditions in much of Iraq are worse than they were under the U.S./UN sanctions blockade that killed 1.5 million people from 1990-2003. (And they continue to reap billions in profits.)

9. In summer 2003, Bush predicted that the total cost of the war would be $50-60 billion—a major miscalculation. (Currently, the price of the war is about $10 million per hour.)

Count me among those who believe whoever disbanded the Iraqi army made a big mistake; and irrespective who failed, the President buys that mistake. Having said that, Sloan does have a valid point with respect to the nature of a Sunni-controlled army in a primarily Shia Iraq. It is a possibility that the existing Iraqi army could have become the equivalent of the national police force--The middle course of action, I suspect, would have been a careful review of the leadership structure of the existing army, weeding out the hard core Baathists, and then moving some Shia officers into the chain of command. That would have taken time, but the approach finally taken ended up adding much more training time to bring an army up to speed.

roger,The problem with the logic of the Iraqis becoming some kind of police force for the Americans was lost when they stopped "paying" them, leaving hundreds of thousands of men unemployed. (Where do YOU think they would get their salaries?)

People without the means to support their families are generally not comfortable with helping those who created the situation.

This is pure revisionist spin to take the heat off the administration for making a huge mistake.

If we'd thought things through (as if that was possible), we would have made it perfectly clear that we were there to train and help enforce the "law of the land"...and then LEAVE...with the new Iraqi forces in charge of their own affairs.

This has been nothing more than an invasion and occupation since day one...and that's exactly how the Iraqi people see us...as an occupying force. (And a CHRISTIAN one at that.)

We should have kept them on a payroll until such time as they could have been reconstituted or discharged.

And if they had gone after the Shia you would be blaming Bush for the genocide. Clearly, there is not "right" course for the Left. All they are interested in is poking Bush with a stick when his administration stumbles.

The reason that it turned out to have been a good thing that the Iraqi army was disbanded is that it was Sunni Arab run, and used for decades to keep the Iraqi people brutally cowed. The officer corp, in particular, was almost exclusively Sunni Arab.

The new Iraqi army is primarily Shiite led, with a sizable Kurdish contingent. In short, it much better reflects the demographic makeup of the country. And as such, it has significantly more buy-in by the Iraqi people.

The old Iraqi army would (and ultimately did) have a lot of sympathy for al Qaeda and the Sunni terrorists. The new one has a similar problem with the Shiite militias.

The only way that the old Iraqi army, or any real part of it, could have pacified the population would have been a continuation of Saddam's ethnic violence against the Shiites and Kurds.

In short, looking back, we had a choice of an army run by 20% of the population, or one run by 80% (now 90%) of the population. Lucky uses an extremely bogus 100k death toll figure. It would have been that and more if the Sunni Arabs still controlled the army, which they would have, having constituted most of the officer corp under Saddam.

Keep in mind that much of the violence, and in particular, the Sunni violence (including al Qaeda), which means almost all of the IEDs, suicide bombers, etc., is in reaction to the (then) 20% Sunni Arab minority losing control of the country. They had controlled the country for hundreds of years, and had lost that control to the majority Shiites and Kurds. So, just imagine that instead of IEDs, they had tanks, machine guns, and even the U.S. military behind them.

So, getting rid of the old Iraqi army might have been for the wrong reasons, but in the end, it was the right thing to do.

Lucky, I have tried numerous times to engage you in a discussion, debate, etc from everything on the war, immigration and terrorism only be to called an idiot, moron and out of my mind. That's not having a discussion but rather a shouting match and while it was commonplace in kindergarten now it's tiresome and a waste of my time.

Having said that, Sloan does have a valid point with respect to the nature of a Sunni-controlled army in a primarily Shia Iraq. It is a possibility that the existing Iraqi army could have become the equivalent of the national police force--The middle course of action, I suspect, would have been a careful review of the leadership structure of the existing army, weeding out the hard core Baathists, and then moving some Shia officers into the chain of command. That would have taken time, but the approach finally taken ended up adding much more training time to bring an army up to speed.

It wasn't just the hard core Baathists, it was that almost the entire officer corp was Sunni Arab. This is the group that has caused most of the bloodshed in Iraq since our intervention, and the group that essentially controlled Iraq for hundreds of years, and esp. since liberation from the Turks.

In order for the army to be the people's army, it would likely have needed at least half of its officers be either Shia or Kurds. And mere elimination of the most egregious Baathists was't going to do that. But without that, the army would have been fighting the Shia and Kurds, and not the Sunni Arabs, as it has primarily done since then.

Fen: some people might have blamed Bush for any bloodshed, but I would not have been one. My basic point with respect to the Iraqi army was that it didnt make good sense to let a sizeable and armed contingent of fairly young males loose in a relative chaotic situation. Providing them a pay check, asking them to report to training camps, and in general trying to exercise some degree of control would have been a good course of action.

I recognize the arguments about sunni led; and baathists--and I am NOT suggesting to reconstitute the army as it is existed under Saddam without considerable evaluation and weeding out of the officer corps. It would have a been a fairly tedious process, but I suggest it would have kept some 100K or so relatively well armed young men off the streets who, if they didnt side with AQ or the insurgents would end up being the kidnappers and other criminals. Once the can of worms is opened, its hard to get them back in--which, IMO, is what happened.

Lucky, you are right that Iraq has been much harder than people expected. But, that doesn't mean it should be abandoned.

Besides, no wars go according to plans. And Iraq is still a small war compared to most others both in blood and treasure.

Many expected 10,000+ casualties in Gulf War I. Our only relative comparisons of large scal wars before that were Vietnam and Korea. No one expected a 4 day war with only 100 casualties.

No one knows what the generals told Bush what to expect in the nvasion of Iraq. I heard that he was told to expect 5000 deaths from the major combat in the first year, more than 1/2 from chemical weapons attacks.

Soldiers marching to Bull Run thought the war would be over in a month. It lasted 4 years with half a million deaths.

but I suggest it would have kept some 100K or so relatively well armed young men off the streets who, if they didnt side with AQ or the insurgents would end up being the kidnappers and other criminals.

But, you don't really know. This could have made things worse by forever corrupting the army. One of the great successes we have had in Iraq is the building of the new Iraqi army. If it started out corrupt and full of misfits, it may have been impossible to rebuild into a credible institution that all ethnic groups respected.

Sure a lot of these misfits joined Al Qaeda. But, maybe they would have joined anyways. We don't know.

It was smart to disband the army and start from scratch. They did it in Germany in 1945. That worked. Why not copy success.

Every account I've read, including (especially) those written by former Iraqi generals is that there was no army to disband. As the headline states, by the time Baghdad fell the Iraqi Army had simply dissolved. Interviews with soldiers bolster this--most just went home. (In one case, they just got out of their tanks and left the battlefield.)

Sloan, I am a bit leery of comparing the experience of Germany (and Japan) to Iraq simply because of the notable cultural differences between the three.

In the end, the decision to disband the Iraqi army, either by intent, inaction, or mistake will end up very much like President Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan: it will provide grist for the discussion mills into the distant future. And in the end, none of us will know--we will merely believe. Examining the past, while instructive, sometimes takes our eyes off the ball and that focus, should be toward the future.

It was smart to disband the army and start from scratch. They did it in Germany in 1945. That worked. Why not copy success.

The difference was a good chunk of those guys also sat in massive POW camps for the next couple of years going through de-Nazification.

Also keep in mind that in addition to the couple million troops we had in Europe, we also had a few million Russians with a hundred thousand or so of Brits, Canucks and other colonial odds and sods helping to keep order. Also keep in mind that Germany was beat senseless. I think few people fully appreciate the devastation that was wrought on that country. Most major cities were in rubble with hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. The Germans were sufficently cowed to the point where to quote the Borg: Resistance is futile. The Iraqis never experienced that since we simply went out of our way to avoid doing what the 8th Air Force did 60 years earlier.

The better result would have been killing the lot of the Iraqi army during the war. Hard to have an insurgency when the participants are all dead.

Sloanasaurus said..."Lucky, you are right that Iraq has been much harder than people expected. But, that doesn't mean it should be abandoned."

As Ronnie would say: "There you go again..."

I've never said we should "abandon" Iraq, only that we should establish firm deadlines for the Iraqis to take control, start drawing down the troops and get out within a year to 18 months.

No matter what...there's going to be hell to pay once we're out completely...unless of course we come to a diplomatic agreement between the three factions and are allowed to continue overseeing the rebuilding of the country's infrastructure while they divide up the country and the future oil revenues..

Blathering on about the "surge" is a waste of time because the minute the "surge" ends...everything starts up again...and we can't just keep our own soldiers there forever. (1,800 Iraqis civilians died in August-and what, 80 Americans? And, keep in mind, we don't count car bombs, if you can imagine that, nor do we count those who are killed withing their own Shiite or Sunni factions themselves...so exactly what part of the "surge" do you think the Iraqis feel is working??)

And Sloan, when you say; "Iraq has been much harder than people expected"...what you really should say is that Bush and his cadre of neocons didn't plan effectively for the unforeseen consequences of invading a country with such diverse cultures and religions.

Once the initial invasion ended, this has been nothing but a cluster-fuck and everybody here knows it, too...although few will admit to the truth.

I think Roger got it pretty right. Disbanding the military and even more so the Iraqi State Police, the Muquabarat, was a 1st-order blunder.

Roger said... I think Bremer's statement is a bit disingenous for this reason: The Iraqi army was defeated, but it was dissolved only in an organizational sense. The soldiers of the army, many of whom kept their AKs and equipment, could have easily been told to report for reconscription and reorganization--the prospect of a paycheck would have been a big incentive, esp if there was a safe conduct assurance.

The military mostly "melted away" simply because as US forces and airpower advanced, it was readily apparant that the war was lost and it was utter suicide to remain in organized formations awaiting US anti-armor precision weapons and anti-personnel cluster bombs dropped with no warning.

But we had the ability to gather them back. Jay Garner, who said he had no warning that Bremer would dissolve the staff of the Army and Police with no pay, and wasn't consulted on the mass firing of all Ba'athists? He said that he had commitments for 100,000 military to remuster back on bases for pay and reassignment. And that he had been in negotiations with the Secret Police to assemble and turn over their documents and only work under US command.

This mustering of enemy assets is what we did in the Postwar of WWII. The military, Abwehr, police were mustered - some put to direct use under US command - others simply so we could keep an eye on them while de-Nazification carefully went on over the next 2 years. In Japan, we kept the Imperial Army and Navy together, even were the ones that kept over a million deployed overseas safe and ferried back to their home islands. For two years, we used those troops with our guys or Aussies supervising, on our payroll, doing reconstruction until Japan's economy rebounded enough to demuster them to civilian jobs. The Japanese State Police, the feared Kempetai, kept their lead on domestic security, with new rules our guys had them follow, with us looking over their shoulders.The Bundeswehr, the Japanese SDF, the State Police of both countries were not built from scratch in the Postwar, but rebuilt.

Jay Garner wanted them under our control so we could watch them, slowly de-Ba'athify, use them under our direct command for tasks since we had so few troops in Iraq, and develop as intelligence sources about who did not muster, would have been insurgents anyways, and which Shiites would emerge as lethal threats to Americans.

Bremer & Co. went with the Neocon's arrogant presumption that no security and chaos was better than "offending" Shiite activists.

Along with the mass firing of all Sunnis in civil government who were Ba'athists, the eradication of State Police functioning...what Bremer did with Bush's signoff was a true catastrophe.

Imagine you are a Sunni weapons tech and you meet your cop cousin after both of you were fired with no pay and "sent home" to a Sunni neighborhood. Both of you had no love of Saddam and hoped to convince the Americans and the new Iraqi gov't of that. And you never had a chance.What option OTHER than joining the insurgency and working with AQ to kill&maim Americans and cost them hundreds of millions did you have? What was an alternative once you saw hardcore Shiites in charge of the police stations, Interior Ministry and both those setting up death squads?

Any rational person, if put in the position Bremer put Sunni leaders and combat-seasoned cops and fighters in, would have done the same thing. Concluded the only option was to fight. And since AQ, a loathsome group Iraq had mostly shunned was there offering to help you attack Americans and Shiite death squads - what else would you do but invite them in given how circumstances had changed?

No, disbanding and firing all the Sunnis in the Army, Secret Police, in all the civilian posts was something no conquering military had ever done to a defeated foe they kept alive. It was stupid beyond belief. And the history books will say so.

There seems to be a dispute as to whether Paul Bremer, acting for this administration, ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi Army or whether "there was no Iraqi Army to disband...most just went home."

Well, either the former is the case, which they now recognize to have been a terrible blunder, with the result that they're now lying about the true circumstances to mitigate their responsibility; or, the latter is the case, which means they lied about it previously...taking credit for pro-actively "disbanding" an Iraqi Army that no longer truly existed. If this is so, one may presume they thought it would demonstrate their sureness of purpose, as well as their complete power over the defeated Iraq.

Me, I'd bet they fucking blundered and disbanded the army, and they're lying now about what actually happened.

Bottom line is, this administration is malevolent, incompetent, and dishonest: they can never be truthful about anything they've done, as the revelations of their evil intent and bumbling performance would, they fear, turn their remaining few diehard supporters against them...and perhaps even instill in the invertebrate Congress enough semblance of spine that impeachment hearings might be initiated.

Of course, they've been caught in so many lies by this point that it astonishes one to contemplate that anyone at this late date gives credence to any claimes they make about anything. They've so poisoned their own well that sensible persons have to consider their every utterance a lie.

robert cook said: "Me, I'd bet they fucking blundered and disbanded the army, and they're lying now about what actually happened."

Of course they're lying.

We've been reading accounts of this for 4 years, reports provided by reporters on the ground and even military people who either "retired" or were forced out.(And now we have Bush saying he can't even "remember" how it all came about?? Give-me-a-break.)

What's truly amazing though, is that they literally let these people leave, with their weapons and munitions intact (not counting the stolen munitions thereafter)...and with no viable means of supporting their families, which in most cases can be quite extended.)

Now, considering the fact that these were professional soldiers, who were paid to be professional soldiers...what exactly did they think these people would do for a living? Sell cars? Or, hey, maybe real estate?

Try to imagine our own military people, suddenly being told to go on home, but don't expect any pay checks from this day on, just try to figure something out on your own. Do you think that might create some anxious moments? Think anybody might be a tad pissed off about how they were treated?

Well, that's exactly what happened, but it was an invading, Christian nation that sent them on their way.

I'm not excusing their behavior, but by not considering the ramifications of such an action, especially with the diverse factions in Iraq, combined with the religious elements, we lit the fuse that we're trying to put out right now.

Bin Laden video due for 9/11 anniversary: Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden will address the American people by videotape on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, a terrorism watch group says.

FOR FEN:Sidney Blumenthal writes that President Bush knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction before the invasion of Iraq. Or, at least, he was briefed on this but chose to disregard the briefing.

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Note in particular (emphasis added):

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD. …